Q&A With Dick Cavett

The talk-show icon opens up about his rebirth as a blogger the state of celebrity, and how to choke G. Gordon Liddy.

Q:Watching The Dick Cavett shows, I’m reminded that what’s really missing these daysnot just on television but in generalis wit.A: It’s having bad days, isn’t it? What many of the reviews of the Cavett Show DVDs are saying is, “Where would you get this kind of thing today?”there’s really nothing like it on television. I wasn’t egotistical enough to go around thinking that, but I do see that they’re right.

Q:I read that ABC actually erased some of your old shows and now they’re lost forever.A: Yeah, the assholes in charge at that time saw no value in anything on tapeparticularly since they could use it to tape Let’s Make a Deal. I had my first Bob Hope show at ABC. I was so new and so semi-innocent that the camera caught me looking in the wings to see if Bob Hope was actually there.

Q:You met Groucho Marx by following him home from a funeral. You got your first break by ambushing Jack Paar with an envelope filled with your jokes. It seems like you owe much of your success to ballsy solicitations.A: That’s what they are. And they never seemed to come from a thought process. In that case, getting material to PaarI just assumed I will just go there and try to give it to him. What have I lost if I fail? And what made it almost uncannily chancy was that he came out of a men’s room at the exact time that I was looking for him in that very hall. The man who gave me the most golden advice ever: “Don’t make it an interview, kid. Make it a conversation.”

Q:You were friends with Johnny Carson, obviously, but you had people on your show who he wouldn’t necessarily get. You had Joplin, Hendrix, LennonA: But also I had [diplomat] Averell Harriman and [economist] John Kenneth Galbraith. I think [Johnny] felt he wasn’t likely to be able to handle some of those people. He could have done wellhe wasn’t a dumbo in any sense of the word.

Q:And now you’re a blogger for the New York Times. What’s it like to go from being a talk-show host to essentially conversing with yourself?A: I don’t really know. It has struck me as strange. I like the people who say “It’s great having you back, even this way,” but I’m troubled by those who say “Why don’t you do a show? Just go on and do one!” I don’t know how to say “It doesn’t work that way.” I would love to do a show. I suddenly realized that. For years it hadn’t bothered me at all. But I realized I would be very good now, in some ways better than I was.